grosbeakRC.ca

Workshop

Shop

My workshop is tucked into a corner of our basement. The basement was finished when we bought the house, but very sloppily so - so all of the wallboard and crooked, misaligned ceiling tiles came down and most of our stuff went in.

It started out as a woodworking shop. The previous owners of the house left behind a huge old workbench made of massive pieces of timber, complete with a large and perfectly functional vise. I gave it a new plywood top, installed a lower shelf and braced it with wire at the back. It got new adjustable feet so it could be leveled. And I dabbled, built a few things, took a couple of cabinetmaking courses... and then the RC bug bit me. This is now, first and foremost, an aeromodelling shop.

On the other side of the basement we are creating a dedicated wood shop. My darling wife, an avid woodturner, has her lathe there. And other tools will move there - the band saw, drill press, grinder and mitre saw.

From the outside looking in you can see the airplane bench in the foreground, the big workbench against the wall in the background, and the toolbox off to the right:

Yes, this is a Billy bookcase from Ikea. No worries - it's anchored to the wall. Most of my old woodworking books and magazines are still in there, along with a lot of rattle cans. The top shelf is mostly hardware my dear departed and much-loved Grandfather-in-law gave to me when he and Grandma moved out of their house. There's a tower of tape on the floor and you can see the vise on the end of the bench:

The toolbox I got for Christmas when I was sixteen, a storage dresser in need of repair or replacement and shelf with most of my collection of screws. Airplane bench to the right, bandsaw in the corner:

Here near the stairs, more storage. Transmitter cases on the floor, shelves for 2-stroke oil and balsa, a dresser resurrected from the curb with soldering station on top. Top drawer - chargers and covering irons. Second drawer - balsa and ply offcuts. Third drawer - covering scraps, stickers and decals. Bottom drawer - Rolls of covering. And another fine Ikea shelf that holds portable power tools:

Driving

The best RC fasteners are socket head cap screws, which require hex head drivers. Ball drivers add flexibility by allowing an angle between the driver and the fastener. However, not all ball drivers are created equal. These are by Bondhus, made in the USA. Metric set:

Power tools

This is the tool with a thousand uses. I bought it for my Dad at Christmas when I was about eighteen. When he and Mom moved out of the house into their condo, I got all his tools - including this. It's incredibly reliable and gets a lot of use drilling, shaping, cutting and grinding: